Gym, multi-purpose facility a game-changer

Tammy Wilson, the C.E.O. here at Oak Grove Center for Education Treatment & The Arts, looks out over the new gymnasium from an upstairs recreation room in the facility's new gymnasium/multi-purpose building.
— Charlie Neuman

Tammy Wilson, the C.E.O. here at Oak Grove Center for Education Treatment & The Arts, looks out over the new gymnasium from an upstairs recreation room in the facility's new gymnasium/multi-purpose building.
— Charlie Neuman

As Tammy Wilson gives a tour of the new gymnasium at Oak Grove Center, she proudly points to the donor boards and original artwork on the walls, and the new green logo on the polished hardwood floor.

Wilson -- the CEO at the residential treatment center and school, also known as Jack Weaver -- has referred to the 23,000-square-foot gym and multipurpose center as "our big dream."

Then she stops at a mounted photo of a former colleague, Peggy Anderson King, on a wall near the entrance.

"She wanted a gym way before I ever did," Wilson said. "I knew too much about the budget to think it was even possible. She just, you know, loved the kids."

Wilson said King ran the recovery program at Oak Grove, which serves about 160 children and young adults receiving treatment for emotional, psychological and neurological issues. King retired in 2008. Last year, she died of cancer.

The new $2 million center that opens this week is more than a sports hall, although the main gym itself is expansive enough to accommodate a basketball game and volleyball game, simultaneously. It also could host concerts.

But there is a music room upstairs, a weight room, a game room with a flat-screen TV and a ping pong table. Also on the upper level, a sensory play room for the students with autism.

"She (King) would really be so proud of this," Wilson said.

Since coming to Oak Grove in 1991, Wilson said she has sensed the need for some kind of multipurpose facility to serve this community of patients and students. Seventy-six kids live in campus housing. There were dorms and classrooms, but really nowhere else to gather other than the cafeteria.

"So whenever there would be inclement weather -- it's too hot, it's too cold -- there's literally no place for them to play," Wilson said.

Wilson still thought a gym and multipurpose center was a long-range goal until about three years ago.

The school started holding a charity golf tournament at Pechanga about that time. Board member generosity picked up, Wilson said, and she began churning out grant proposals. She said that a few of the grants were successful because the project would serve such a high percentage of economically disadvantaged youths.

Everybody got the spirit. The mother of one student got donations for running in the Carlsbad Half Marathon. And the boys in one class who ran a snack bar dedicated those proceeds to the new gym.

"Obviously we're still paying for it, but we didn't take a loan," Wilson said.

She said that all manner of donations, contributions, matching donations, and discounts on work and services went into pulling off the project.

"I'm just really kind of speechless," she said.

Musician Scott Grijalva, 16, couldn't know all the history behind the facility. He said he came to Oak Grove in the fall of 2011, and he had grown accustomed to rehearsing with the rock band in the cafeteria.

"We make do with we what have," Grijalva said. "But I always just thought it would be cool if we had like an independent room for all those individual practices, and rehearsals."